The UnRecorded | Live Music: Kid, You’ll Move Mountains, Geronimo! at Schubas
Posted on May 10, 2010 by Greg
Kid, You’ll Move Mountains, Geronimo!, PolarOPPOSITEbear, Inspector Owl
Schubas Tavern, Chicago 4-30-2010
So we’ve been up late a lot recently seeing shows, and this particular Friday night we find ourselves staring down a quadruple-bill at Schubas that starts at 9pm. Sheesh. But we have heard and liked Kid, You’ll Move Mountains’ debut album, Loomings and want to see how this complex recording translates live. So we suck it up and head to the Northside to pay another visit to one of our favorite venues, Schubas.
We get there a little late, and Chicago’s Inspector Owl is already a few minutes into their set. IO is Corey Wills (vocals/guitar), Jesse James Fisher (drums/vocals), Jason S. Thompson (bass/vocals/percussion), Peter Alb (guitar/keys) and Bobby Lord (guitar/keys). The band has elements of Radiohead and The Smiths with more aggressive drumming than either. It’s a pretty catchy unit with some complex songs: “We kill our young, we feed our enemies” is sung as sweetly as a lullaby. This opening band sounds like a headliner to me.
PolarOPPOSITEbear is next, and I am bracing for a jokey-joke joke band, but instead am kicked in the liver by the Wichita, Kansas quartet of Matt Wiseman (guitar/vocals), Jesse Askren (bass/vocals), Andrew Harms (Guitar/Synth) and Kevin Wildt (drums). They play red hot post-punk that would grow balls on a Ken doll. And in between songs, Wiseman, who seems a little trashed, says the nicest things about all the people in the other bands. He’s the polar opposite of his singer personality; and on the last song, he crashes off the stage and lurches around the floor with his leg in a trash can, like a drunken bear in a trap. Band name explained, justified.
Rockford IL’s Geronimo! is next. They come onstage looking like three mild-mannered junior executives at a corporate talent show, but play what might be described as wrath-of-god rock. Singer/guitarist KJ Blaze blasts through chords that make your neck and chest vibrate. It’s pretty fascinating to watch Ben Grigg essentially play bass with his keyboard, and Schwerin beats his kit so hard that he has a couple of cymbals with chunks knocked out of them; they look like they lost a fight with a sledgehammer. It’s not metal; it’s still tuneful rock, but these seven and eight-minute epics hit awfully damn hard. Cheap Trick will probably always remain #1 in the heart of Rockford, but these guys should be moving up the charts.
Kid, You’ll Move Mountains guitarist/singer Jim Hanke seems almost apologetic about following Geronimo!, but he shouldn’t have worried; his band is the most complex and interesting of the evening, and they know how to pack a punch as well. This IL quintet features two siblings: ex-Troubled Hubble brothers Nate Lanthrum (drums) and Andrew Lanthrum (bass) and pianist/vocalist Nina Lanthrum, Nate’s wife. They also share guitarist Corey Wills with IO.
KYMM’s music has a fluid emotionality that surges and ebbs in unpredictable ways that are almost childlike: wide-eyed wonder shifts to raging tantrums and back. The bass and drums set the flutter/crash tempos that the rest of the players dance to. The songwriting is also awfully strong. The lyrics are stunning little sawed-off poems stacked atop one another, full of haunting imagery and powerfully delivered by Nina Lanthrum and Hanke, whose voices intertwine in harmony or dissonance or both. It’s this twin-vocal interplay that really sets the band apart and makes it one to watch.
If these were the old Studio-dominated days, I could see Kid getting passed over; their debut album Loomings isn’t bursting with Top 40 tooth-rot. But there are so many viable smaller labels these days, it’s freaking absurd that this band is unsigned.
KYMM ends the night with the gut-busting howls of “No Applause,” which is greeted by tons of applause. It’s nearly 1am, almost four hours after we tired UnCool arrived.
I’m wide awake.
–Greg from The UnCool
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Tweets that mention Thanks a ton to for their pix + kind review of our recent Schuba's show! Read here: -- Topsy.com - 10th May, 10 03:05pm